Athens, Ga. – Emmanuel Fiadzo, the economic governance cluster leader for the World Bank in Liberia, will deliver this year’s Darl Snyder lecture on Thursday, March 6, at 10 a.m. in the University of Georgia Chapel.
Fiadzo, who earned his doctorate in 1998, was the first graduate of the housing and consumer economics doctoral program in the UGA College of Family and Consumer Sciences.
“This is the first time that the lecture series is featuring a UGA alum,” according to Lioba Moshi, director of the African Studies Institute, which sponsors the lecture. “Among the African graduate students to come through here, he has risen in the ranks of the World Bank so quickly and has worked with a number of African countries so well.”
Currently, Fiadzo also serves as the manager of the World Bank’s governance and economic management assistance program to the government of Liberia. Liberia has endured more than a decade of civil strife that has devastated its political and financial institutions.
Fiadzo, who originally is from Ghana, began his career with an internship at the World Bank while still a graduate student. That internship led to a position as an independent economic advisor in a number of African countries, including Mozambique, Tanzania, Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, and Ghana.
From 2000-2003, he served as the economic and financial advisor to two prime ministers and former President Ange-Felix Patasse in the Central African Republic.
After spending two years as a fellow in housing studies at Harvard University, Fiadzo was hired by the World Bank as an economist. Prior to his work in Liberia, he led the World Bank team that helped the Gabonese government develop a poverty reduction strategy and he wrote Gabon’s first public expenditure and financial accountability review in 20 years.
The Darl Snyder Lecture honors the retired director of the UGA Office of International Development.
“Dr. Snyder is responsible for many of the African students who have studied at the University of Georgia,” according to Moshi. “He was an inspiring teacher and an inspiring administrator. This lecture helps us to bring distinguished scholars and contributors to the study of Africa to campus.”
Moshi credits Snyder with providing African faculty the support they needed to establish the African Studies Program at UGA in 1987. The program was elevated to institute status in 2001.
He also helped develop a number of programs that have connected UGA with various African countries. In 1980, he helped develop a proposal that led the U.S. Agency for International Development to implement a worldwide collaborative research support program on peanuts. He also was involved in the development, and served as technical director, of a USAID-funded agricultural human resource development project in what is now Burkina Faso.
The Snyder Lecture is open to the public. For more information, call Akinloye Ojo at 706/542-7730 or email him at akinloye@uga.edu.
